indulgence of his distinguished friend. He throws Madame into a magnetic sleep, and extorts from her an admission of the fact, that eighteen years ago, being very jealous of her Theodore—as she calls Pluto (and if one could suspect a French dramatist of thinking of derivatives, the selection of the name would be charming), she gave away his beauty to a little newborn girl of Madame’s own native country, a child of the village of Bolbec, on the Great Western Railway. A vision is raised, and the girl in question, now of course grown up, is seen as a handsome peasant-girl, surrounded by turkeys, to whom she sings a rustic song. Her name is Fanchette.
Pluto rages once more, and is about to put his wife into a sack, and throw her into the Styx, but is luckily reminded that she is immortal. His second thought is better. He resolves to regain his beauty. He will take Brasseur with him to Normandy. But Brasseur will not go, unless Pluto promises to send him back to life, ensure him a splindid re-engagement at the Palais Royal, the right to refuse to play in the first piece, and the second piece, and the last piece (all good hitting at the demands of favourite actors), and a three months’ congè. Which being agreed to, off they go, leaving Mrs. Pluto in hysterics.
Usually, the slightest French pieces are constructed with the logical carefulness which often elevates the merest bagatelle into a work of art. Unnecessary scenes and unnecessary dialogue are ruthlessly excluded, the end is held steadily in view by the author, and everything is designed to lead up to it. A French dramatist would twist his moustache in bewilderment and horror at a drama of the kind that satisfied our fathers, and satisfies some of their children, with its “carpenter’s scenes” (scenes of talk, in the front of the stage, while the carpenters are preparing to disclose a show), its unhesitating changes from locality to locality, and its thread of a plot, dropped when the author sees good incidental “business,” or thinks of good irrelevant conversation, and occasionally resumed in order to make the audience think that they are assisting at a play. But in this responsibility piece, the writers, bent upon fun, have forgotten to rest their fun upon any clear basis, and the committee at the Rotund Caffy, who had studied construction from the French stage, repaid the lesson by grumbling that MM. Eugene Grangé and Lambert-Thiboust had left part of the story of “La Beauté” in an Anglican fog. Madame Pluto, in her trance, stated that she had conferred the gift upon the young peasant, whose name is Fanchette (and again be it said, by interpolation, that Madame Schneider is the charm of the piece), but when Pluto and M. Brasseur arrive, it turns out, somehow, that the beauty of the former has been distributed among eight young ladies—or rather peasants—and the unfortunate Pluto is like Kehama, and has to make his way through eight doors at once. The Beauté du Diable—the freshness, naïveté, purity—of all the girls must be taken away from them before it can revert to Pluto. The action of the piece, thenceforth, arises out of the means he employs to demoralise the eight peasantesses. It is hardly necessary to say that he does Paris the justice of at once deciding that in Paris is the atmosphere in which the object can be most readily accomplished. Brasseur is an invaluable aid, and he and Pluto make their way into the school where a worthy old country schoolmaster teaches the girls the old-fashioned lessons of virtue. Pluto passes himself off as an Inspector of Schools, and Brasseur takes the dress and character of the old man, and preaches the most objectionable but most delightful doctrines, assuring the readily-convinced pupils that joy and pleasure are the only objects of life. Seven of the girls are the thoughtless, or selfish, or impressionable young women likely to be found in a country village, but the eighth, of course Fanchette, is of a better nature, and moreover, has her nature awakened by love for a nice little rustic lover.
So the ladies are brought to Paris, and we find them in another act revelling at the Moulin Rouge, where Pluto, disguised as a waiter, watches their proceedings, and introduces a good deal of fun on his own account, and cries “Boum” as well—indeed he piques himself on the accomplishment—as if he had been jerking a coffee-pot all his life. In the following act the girls are taken to Baden, by way of completing their education, and it need not be said that ample scope is given, in both acts, to Brasseur, for displaying his special talent, that of assuming a diversity of characters in rapid succession. Towards the end of the piece an opportunity is afforded him of delighting the Parisians by appearing as the conventional English lady of the French stage. She is not the least in the world like any Englishwoman ever seen in Paris or anywhere else, and some of our countrywomen are ridiculous enough to afford material for a legitimate caricature. But the French, with all their esprit, are easily pleased, and it is not worth while for an author or artist to take the trouble of being original or truthful, while the public is content to laugh at an old and silly type of a foreigner. Up to this time, when the “Charivari” has a fling at an English member of parliament, he is placed in the tribune, and “porter-beer” is asked for in an English ball-room. The English dramatist, who should make a Frenchwoman clamorous for frogs, would be hissed even in these days, when the patrons of the theatre are chiefly of the less educated class; but a French author is encouraged by the applause of the critical Parisians to put this kind of thing into the mouth of an English lady, who wears long red curls to her waist, and spectacles, and courts a young Frenchman in bad French, which frequently becomes double entendre. The song shall be translated exactly, but the false tenses and distorted pronunciation must be imagined:
Air.—Quadrille des Rifflemen (sic).
I have an hotel in the quarter of Westminster,
I have a chateau near Manchester,
I have money in the railroads.
Also I have
A box at the Opera,
And a cottage,
And a brilliant equipage
With gilded pannels,
And two tall powdered lacqueys,
Embroidered
Like noblemen.
